Which Graphics API?

[Black Patriot]

Hmmm, I think the reasoning has to be a little more robust than "I don't know anyone still running a DX9 card so we should forget about that".

There are plenty of sources for very reliable statistics on this. Steam's latest hardware survey shows that use of PS2 and PS3 hardware is really dropping off now, but it still leaves the two varieties of PS3 with an 8% share of gaming PC's. I think many people would see that as a pretty big chunk of the market to completely drop support for.

From what I've heard almost every modern game, at least those by the major game companies or programed on a modern game engine (UE3 & CE3 for example), are working directly with the hardware and bypassing the API. My basic understanding is that using the API is only done when you can't access the hardware directly, e.g. for launch titles where there isn't time to get it right. The reason that DirectX is so necessary for PC games is because of the sheer amount of different hardware configurations, working directly with the hardware through the drivers would get very difficult very quickly.

Short version: DirectX and OpenGL aren't used for anything other than launch titles, indie games (not to pay out indie games, there are lots of original games coming out of the indie scene), and shovelware on consoles.

Also, Valve's support for the PS3 has previously been pretty lackluster, the Orange Box wasn't ported in house and was barely supported after release. Portal 2 is the first game that's been developed for the PC, 360 and PS3 in house, and the Steam integrating with the Playstation Network indicates that they're hoping that the PS3 will become a far bigger part of their market.

[Jon]

DX API's are pretty important as they allow development of stable software quickly and efficiently, with much less overhead.

Accessing the HW directly effectively means you have to build your own API into the game, which, while it may have the benefit of increased features and felxibility, is both costly and time consuming.

[Mark]

Also, Valve's support for the PS3 has previously been pretty lackluster, the Orange Box wasn't ported in house and was barely supported after release. Portal 2 is the first game that's been developed for the PC, 360 and PS3 in house, and the Steam integrating with the Playstation Network indicates that they're hoping that the PS3 will become a far bigger part of their market.

PS stands for Pixel Shader, not PlayStation. I'm afraid consoles aren't really relevant to the discussion as far as the current plans for Excalibur go anyway.

[Black Patriot]

PS stands for Pixel Shader, not PlayStation. I'm afraid consoles aren't really relevant to the discussion as far as the current plans for Excalibur go anyway.

Ah, I was slightly confused as to why you'd bring up the Playstation when Excalibur isn't being developed for consoles, my mistake.

DX API's are pretty important as they allow development of stable software quickly and efficiently, with much less overhead.

Accessing the HW directly effectively means you have to build your own API into the game, which, while it may have the benefit of increased features and felxibility, is both costly and time consuming.

On PC they're certainly necessary, but the only way for consoles to compete with current PC hardware is for game engines to be designed for direct access to the hardware drivers, something which is far obviously far simpler on a console which has identical hardware on every unit.

As for dropping support for Pixel Shader 2 & 3 I wouldn't say that it's an unreasonable business decision; 8%, while large, isn't a massive amount of customers to lose, especially when compared to the potential benefits of adopting PS4 & 5. Pixel Shader 4 was added to the 8000 series of Nvidia cards and the HD 2400 series from ATI, quite old cards. I would say that it's not unreasonable to expect your customers to be using hardware that's younger than 5 years, which is quite a long time in the PC world, especially for gaming.

[Michael]

I'm in agreement here for the most part.  Pixel Shader 2 (PS 2.0) has now fallen out of scope mainly due to the development of the shaders getting to a point where we are exceeding Instruction Limits of 2.0 and having to do additional Passes (rendering the same geometry multiple times with different shaders applied) to get the look I want.

Therefore our next logical step is to move to PS 3.0.  With our Texture Spec 2 requiring a heavy demand on PS 2, it doesn't make sense to try and fit that into the game now because of the additional passes to acheive it if the hardware only supports PS 2, then we have probably over-taxed the hardware unless you had a high-end PS 2 card you may get an acceptable frame rate and STILL have to turn off some features like Shadows.

We can stick with PS 3 as the minimum and make the game look great, while utilize more advanced features for our DX 11 Shaders.  That is the direction I would like to take it for now.  This could change as time goes on as well.

[AricwithanA]

I'm in agreement here for the most part.  Pixel Shader 2 (PS 2.0) has now fallen out of scope mainly due to the development of the shaders getting to a point where we are exceeding Instruction Limits of 2.0 and having to do additional Passes (rendering the same geometry multiple times with different shaders applied) to get the look I want.

Therefore our next logical step is to move to PS 3.0.  With our Texture Spec 2 requiring a heavy demand on PS 2, it doesn't make sense to try and fit that into the game now because of the additional passes to acheive it if the hardware only supports PS 2, then we have probably over-taxed the hardware unless you had a high-end PS 2 card you may get an acceptable frame rate and STILL have to turn off some features like Shadows.

We can stick with PS 3 as the minimum and make the game look great, while utilize more advanced features for our DX 11 Shaders.  That is the direction I would like to take it for now.  This could change as time goes on as well.

Since tech does keep evolving (no pun intended), I hope we don't get stuck in a temporal loop of update, adding time...update done..new tech...update again...adding time...lol

[Michael]

I don't think so... this is a matter of going with the technology that can meet our requirments.  I mean I can keep developing Pixel Shader 2 Shaders for the engine and still have the game look great... even the same as the PS 3 shaders, it's just that we reduce efficiency when we could be using PS 3 shaders to do one pass instead of 2 or 3 passes.

[AricwithanA]

I don't think so... this is a matter of going with the technology that can meet our requirments.  I mean I can keep developing Pixel Shader 2 Shaders for the engine and still have the game look great... even the same as the PS 3 shaders, it's just that we reduce efficiency when we could be using PS 3 shaders to do one pass instead of 2 or 3 passes.

Sweet!  Yay for better stuff!

[Poseidon]

on
Since tech does keep evolving (no pun intended), I hope we don't get stuck in a temporal loop of update, adding time...update done..new tech...update again...adding time...lol

It's funny you say that.  Every six months there is a new jump in tech (in general). However, the DX standard is, and will be DX11 out to this point.  The tessalation features with explosions will be magnificent!  Not to mention PS 5.0!  But DX11 is the top API set and will stay that way for at least the next 2 years.  There is no plan to release DX12, because there hasn't been a lot of titles released yet in either DX10 or DX11.  So not to worry, DX11 is going to be around for a while.  Besides, we haven't even fully explored DX10 yet.

[AricwithanA]

It's funny you say that.  Every six months there is a new jump in tech (in general). However, the DX standard is, and will be DX11 out to this point.  The tessalation features with explosions will be magnificent!  Not to mention PS 5.0!  But DX11 is the top API set and will stay that way for at least the next 2 years.  There is no plan to release DX12, because there hasn't been a lot of titles released yet in either DX10 or DX11.  So not to worry, DX11 is going to be around for a while.  Besides, we haven't even fully explored DX10 yet.

My last video card upgrade was just as the DX11 cards were coming out so they were really expensive so mine only does DX10.  lol

[Black Patriot]

My last video card upgrade was just as the DX11 cards were coming out so they were really expensive so mine only does DX10.  lol

As I pointed out in another thread, DX10 cards will run DX11 code, they'll simply ignore any feature that they don't have, so the shaders should work fine, it'll just ignore all the calls for, say, tessellation. Don't worry, your card will be PS4.0, so you won't have anything to worry about.

[AricwithanA]

As I pointed out in another thread, DX10 cards will run DX11 code, they'll simply ignore any feature that they don't have, so the shaders should work fine, it'll just ignore all the calls for, say, tessellation. Don't worry, your card will be PS4.0, so you won't have anything to worry about.

Oh I know it will run things just fine.  It runs the modeler rather smoothly!  Nothing to worry about here, but when I do upgrade the media center one day I'll upgrade my main setups video card and pass the current one down to the media center (along with a tv tuner).

[Poseidon]

As I pointed out in another thread, DX10 cards will run DX11 code, they'll simply ignore any feature that they don't have, so the shaders should work fine, it'll just ignore all the calls for, say, tessellation. Don't worry, your card will be PS4.0, so you won't have anything to worry about.

Yes, DX10 card can't do tessalation, or the 5.0 Shader.  But everything else is possible.  What we are seeing in the viewer is DX9 I believe.  So, that looks awesome as it is.  Not to worry for anyone.  This game is going to look good regardless.

[Daedalus]

One thing that I think would make the game look fantastic - and is very canon - is Depth of Field. This would look wonderful in cutscenes, especially with the interiors. DX10 can do DOF to a certain extent, but it doesn't do it right.

Crysis for example simply blurs out everything but the foreground equally, which obviously ignores object distance completely.

Tessellation would obviously be a big hit as well, especially for this like Borg ships.

[Jon Deane]

Does anyone know what PS an ATI Mobility FireGL v5700 uses?  I can't find that information anywhere, but I think I remember reading that it uses PS 2 long ago.

Plus, my laptop uses a switchable graphics card and the integrated card almost certainly won't run Excalibur.  Will that cause issues even when running the discrete card?  I can't use IE9's hardware acceleration because of the integrated card even when using the discrete one, so it's caused issues before.

[Darkthunder]

Does anyone know what PS an ATI Mobility FireGL v5700 uses?  I can't find that information anywhere, but I think I remember reading that it uses PS 2 long ago.

Plus, my laptop uses a switchable graphics card and the integrated card almost certainly won't run Excalibur.  Will that cause issues even when running the discrete card?  I can't use IE9's hardware acceleration because of the integrated card even when using the discrete one, so it's caused issues before.

Not sure which version of PS it uses, but it's definitely a DX 10.1 card, as per the following list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Mobility_FireGL.2FFirePro_series

[Jon Deane]

Too bad.  I guess I won't know if I can run Excalibur until it's released and installed on my laptop.  I've found that ATI puts the minimum version of PS on their cards that they can get away with to drive upgrades.  And to think that I bought this card just for Excalibur (could have gone with 256mb instead of 512 and saved a ton of money).

[Mark]

Can't be sure but looks like the card should be able to run Excalibur just fine, you just might not get all the fancy bells and whistles

[Zachstar]

Hmmm, I think the reasoning has to be a little more robust than "I don't know anyone still running a DX9 card so we should forget about that".

There are plenty of sources for very reliable statistics on this. Steam's latest hardware survey shows that use of PS2 and PS3 hardware is really dropping off now, but it still leaves the two varieties of PS3 with an 8% share of gaming PC's. I think many people would see that as a pretty big chunk of the market to completely drop support for.

"Support" Implies that you are a commercial house. You owe folks nothing considering that unless I am mistaken the game is free to this point. People will upgrade to play YOUR work not the other way around.

The ONLY valid reason in my opinion for sticking with the older API is due to developer resources. A 3870 can't do DX11.